The
hackers accessed a system at Bulgaria's tax agency before
sending an email from a Russian domain to some local media on
Monday with links to data, officials said.
Special anti-cyber crime teams were investigating the attack at
the National Revenue Agency (NRA), which probably came from
abroad and began at the end of June, they added.
"Maybe this is the first case in Bulgaria which is successful
and a lot of personal data has been stolen," Interior Minister
Mladen Marinov told local bTV channel.
The cyber attack was likely motivated, he said, by Bulgaria's
move to buy eight new Lockheed Martin F-16 fighters for $1.256
billion from the United States, its biggest military purchase
since the end of communism.
But the finance minister did not concur with that theory.
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Once an obedient satellite of Moscow, the Balkan nation has
joined the European Union and trans-atlantic NATO alliance since
the turn of the century, and is replacing its ageing Soviet made
MiG-29 planes with the F-16s.
A leading Bulgarian newspaper, 24 Chasa, said one file emailed
by the hackers had more than 1.1 million identification numbers
with income, social security and healthcare figures.
According to local web site Mediapool, the email came from an
address with Russian mail provider Yandex.
There was no immediate comment from authorities in Moscow.
Finance Minister Vladislav Goranov said about 3% of the tax
agency's database was affected, involving millions of records in
the nation of 7 million people. The leaked information was not
classified and did not endanger financial stability, he added.
Goranov declined to link the attack to the F-16 purchase, noting
it occurred before the government approved the deal.
Bulgaria's prime minister convened the national security council
and all state institutions would be checked, Marinov said. Sofia
also planned to seek help from the EU cyber security agency to
fully audit its most sensitive systems.
Bulgarian media said the hackers' email included an appeal for
the release of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. "Your
government is mentally retarded. The state of your
cyber-security is a parody," reports quoted it as saying.
(Reporting by Angel Krasimirov and Tsvetelia Tsolova; Editing by
Andrew Cawthorne)
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